Rewarding Terrorism Encourages Terrorists
12 October 2011
During a debate in the Assembly yesterday on terrorism TUV leader Jim Allister made the following intervention:
“I endorse and note the Member’s condemnation of all these heinous attacks. How far does the Member think that the rewarding of terrorism in the past by delivering a system of terrorists in government in response to those who murdered is, in fact, an encouragement to present-day terrorists? Is it not one of the lessons of the past that, by virtue of what has been done as that legacy, we encourage new terrorists to think that they too, using Provo-owned Semtex and weapons, will attain the same end?”
Mr Allister also outlined the real reason for the Sinn Fein/IRA amendment:
“Before the Member gets too effusive about the content of the Sinn Féin amendment, will he reflect on the fact that what it really points to is the total divergence and hypocrisy of that party in being willing to say that attacks on police officers today are wrong, yet attacks on the RUC and anything else up to 1998 were justified and continue to be so? So long as that is the position, does the Member agree that very little credence can be put on the self-serving stance of the moment?”
Finally, Mr Allister reiterated the point that the structures of the Belfast Agreement reward terrorism:
“The point, which I would like Members to seriously consider, was that we are in the scenario where we are all condemning the murder of PSNI officers. I was making the point that some of those who are today condemning the murder of PSNI officers are those who have justified, and continue to justify, the murder of RUC officers. Yet, it was in order to accommodate those very people that these artificial political structures were created. Something — before this nonsense is repeated — which I never endorsed and for which I resigned from the DUP. The point is this: one of the products of the Belfast Agreement, which Members on those Benches used to oppose, was the rewarding of terrorism and special accommodation for terrorism. My point is that having set that template, are we not inviting the new generation of terrorists to reap the same reward?”
